Epstein Remembers Becker

I first arrived at the University of Chicago Law School as a visiting associate professor in the fall of 1972, quickly learning that a good place to be seen (but not heard) was at the joint law and economics workshops that were held biweekly.

One reason for that was the presence of four economic giants who strode the halls of the university, all of whom are household names in the legal academy: Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and — the youngest of the group by a generation — Gary Becker, who, on Saturday, became the last of this formidable group to pass away.

It was a sobering experience to watch how these minds took after the innocents who presented papers to them. The questions were always tough, and always directed both to matters of high economic theory and to basic forms of social behavior.